CHAPTER THIRTY
The precinct had nearly cleared out. Ella was alone in the office she’d claimed as her own, which suited her fine because she needed silence and she needed to think and she needed to stop staring at a wooden pelican like it was going to open its beak and start talking.
She set it on the desk in front of her.
Each figurine was an arrow. The snowman pointed from Amber to Rose. The ballet dancer pointed from Rose to Eddie Foxall. The key-man pointed from Foxall to Earl Parsons. The pelican, left in Earl’s hand, pointed to victim five. The last one.
So where did a hand-carved pelican point?
She pushed that aside for now because something else was chewing at her. Something the killer had said on the phone.
Someone’s told me all about you.
And later: I opened the door. Just like someone else did for me.
Someone else. What did that mean? Someone who had told this unsub about Ella Dark specifically, who had known enough about Ripley to drop her name on a phone call.
She was in Louisiana. Seventy miles from Austin Creed’s cell at Louisiana State Penitentiary. The obvious answer pointed there.
But that didn’t fit, because Ella had interrogated Creed a few months ago and he’d sworn that he had no desire to hunt down Ella Dark.
Of course, serial killers weren’t the most trustworthy people in the world, but everything had pointed to Austin Creed telling the truth.
He said that he didn’t even know who she was, and killing her wouldn’t spare him the death penalty anyway.
So not Creed.
But Creed wasn’t the only person of interest inside Louisiana State Penitentiary.
Lindsey Doyle had been a corrections officer there.
She had bonded with Creed deeply enough that her twin sister had lied to investigators and vanished to protect whatever that bond meant.
If Doyle could attach herself to one inmate with that kind of intensity, there was no reason she couldn't have done it to another.
Perhaps a different inmate and a different approach. Someone equally vulnerable, malleable and already psychologically damaged by the time he walked through the gates.
But whoever was doing this couldn’t be inside the prison anymore. He was very much out in the real world.
Ella pulled her laptop across the desk and opened the Louisiana Department of Corrections inmate database. She filtered by facility – Louisiana State Penitentiary, then by release date – the last eighteen months. Then by gender – male.
The list was long. She started at the top and worked down.
Harry Hebert, 54. Released nine months ago and now residing in a halfway house in Shreveport. Too far, too old, and his conviction was for fraud.
Not him.
Next was Jerome Fraiser, 41. He’d been paroled eleven months ago and then was re-arrested six weeks later for armed robbery in Texas. Now in a federal facility in Beaumont, so out of the picture entirely.
Next.
Darnell Washington, 62. Released fourteen months ago. Deceased – natural causes, eight months after release. Heart failure.
She kept going. Name after name, eliminated for geography or age or circumstance or the simple fact that they didn’t fit the profile of a man who strangled people from behind and carved figurines with professional-level skill.
Then she hit a name that made her stop scrolling.
Edgar Borden. Age 36. Caucasian. Convicted of aggravated burglary and criminal damage to property. Sentenced to four years, served three. Released seven months ago. Prior employment: carpenter and furniture restorer. Last known address: Orleans Parish, Ninth Ward.
Carpenter and furniture restorer.
Ella read the line again. Then she read the conviction summary.
Borden had broken into three homes in Jefferson Parish over a period of two months.
Not to steal, at least not primarily. He’d vandalised them.
Smashed furniture, pulled fixtures off walls, flooded a bathroom by tearing out the plumbing.
The homes had all belonged to employees of the bank that had foreclosed on his mortgage.
He’d lost his house, his workshop, and according to the pre-sentencing report, his whole family.
Financial ruin followed by incarceration.
She went to NOPD database, found Edgar Borden in there and pulled up his release paperwork.
Post-release employment had been arranged through a reintegration programme.
He’d been placed at a donation centre – Good Shepherd Donations on Claiborne Avenue, which Ella’s online search told her was less than three miles from Rose Michaels’s apartment.
A donation centre. Where secondhand items from all over the parish ended up on shelves and in bins and were picked through by anyone who walked in. Items like music boxes.
Ella picked up the desk phone and dialled the number listed for Good Shepherd Donations. It rang five times before a woman answered.
‘Good Shepherd, this is Patrice.’
‘You’re still open, great,’ Ella said. ‘My name’s Agent Dark with the FBI. I’m looking for an employee of yours. Edgar Borden. Is he there by any chance?’
A pause. ‘Edgar? No ma’am, he’s not in today. He’s off on Tuesdays. He has his meetings.’
‘What meetings?’
‘I’m not sure I can tell you, ma’am.’
‘Please. If you’d like to verify my identity, we can arrange a call back. You might have also spoken to my partner, Agent Ripley, recently.’
‘Ah, yes, one of my colleagues mentioned that name. Long story short, Edgar goes to meetings at the First Love Church on Flood Street. I think it’s something to do with his parole.’
‘Thank you, Patrice.’
Ella hung up and typed First Love Church Flood Street New Orleans into the browser and found the website in three seconds. It was a single page with a simple photo of the church hall and a few paragraphs of text.
She scrolled down and saw it right there in black and white:
Tuesday evenings, 7:00 PM — 9:00 PM: Open Doors Support Group. A safe space for anyone struggling with addiction, grief, trauma, or coping with loss. All welcome. No referral needed.
Coping with loss.
Ella read it ten more times to make sure she wasn’t seeing things.
Amber Holloway lost her home. Rose Michaels lost her child. Eddie Foxall lost his ability to have children. Earl Parsons lost his mind.
Ella dialled First Love Church. It rang twice.
‘First Love, David speaking.’
‘David, this is Agent Dark with the FBI. I need to ask you about your Tuesday night group. Is Edgar Borden there tonight?’
The speaker paused. ‘No, actually. He hasn’t shown up yet. That’s unusual for Edgar, he’s normally the first one through the door. Can I ask what this is about?’
‘David, I need you to listen to me carefully. I’m going to read you some names and I need you to tell me if any of them attended your group. This is a federal investigation and I can verify my identity with a call back to the FBI field office if you need me to.’
Another pause, longer this time. She could hear him weighing it up. Confidentiality versus a woman on the phone who sounded like she meant every word she was saying.
‘Go ahead. I’ll tell you whatever I can.’
‘Eddie Foxall.’
‘Yes. Eddie came to the group.’
Ella’s breath came short. ‘Earl Parsons.’
‘Earl used to come. He stopped a few months back. I think the drive was getting too much for him.’
‘Rose Michaels?’
‘Not Rose, no. But her mother came. Julia, I think?’
‘And Amber Holloway?’
‘Hmm,’ David mumbled. ‘No, I don’t know that name.’
Ella was gripping the phone to the point it hurt her fingers.
Two of the victims had been at this group, one of the victim’s mothers had been to this group.
All of them had walked into that parish hall on a Tuesday night, sat down in a circle of folding chairs, and opened their mouths about the worst thing that had ever happened to them.
And Edgar Borden had been right there. He’d probably listened to Eddie and Earl speak about their problems, and possibly heard Rose’s mother talk about her daughter’s hardships.
Amber hadn’t been there, but if she’d given her music box to the donation center he worked at, the killer could have gotten Amber’s story straight from her.
‘David,’ Ella said. ‘If Edgar Borden shows up tonight, do not approach him. Call 911 immediately. Do you understand?’
‘Yes ma’am.’
She thanked David and hung up.
Edgar Borden worked at the donation centre where the music box could have ended up.
Edgar Borden attended the same support group as at least two of the four victims. Edgar Borden had been exposed to a manipulative psychopath inside Louisiana State Penitentiary.
Edgar Borden had been released to the Ninth Ward, where the cell tower had pinged the killer’s phone.
Edgar Borden was the killer.
But he had no listed address, and if she didn’t find him tonight, there’d be another body by morning.
All she had was a pelican figurine that was supposed to tell her where he was.
The pelican.
She’d pushed it aside when Ripley told her to, and Ripley had been right to say it, because Ella had been running on fumes and not every pelican in Louisiana was the same pelican. Except this one was. She knew it the way she knew her own handwriting.
Edgar Borden. Lindsey Doyle. Austin Creed.
Creed.
‘Oh shit,’ Ella breathed.
Ella felt the thought land before she could articulate it.
She lunged across the desk and grabbed the Creed file.
The NOPD photographs. She'd looked through them yesterday in this same office.
She flipped past the holding pens and the skinning table and the hatchery.
Past the kitchen with the single plate and the tea-stained counters.
Past the living room, the hallway, and the utility room with the chest freezer.
The bedroom.
She found the shot. Austin Creed’s unmade bed. The bedside table. Box of painkillers. Penknife. Two receipts. And there, on the far side of the table, a music box.
With a pelican sitting on top of it.
And an identical pelican at that.
The photograph was slightly out of focus and the colour was washed by the camera flash, but it didn’t matter because she wasn’t comparing paint jobs.
She was comparing shapes, and the shape was identical.
Borden had carved his figurine from memory, or from a photograph, or from a description that Doyle had given him, but either way he had recreated the pelican from Austin Creed’s bedside table.
That’s where he was going. That’s where he was waiting. Edgar Borden had laid out the whole thing like a trail of stones, and the last stone pointed to serial killer’s abandoned farmhouse.
He was luring her there.